Breth

breth presents both new and selected poems from legendary Canadian sound, visual, and performance poet bill bissett. bissett’s innovations have shaped poetry, music, painting, and publishing and have stimulated, provoked, influenced, shocked, and delighted audiences for half a century. This new collection, bissett writes, “shows sew manee threds thru poetree n langwage btween n thru lyrik sound song vizual narrativ non narrativ his her storikal naytur humour sexual romantik politikul metaphysikal spiritual fuseyunth pickshur image in th lettr th shape uv th lettr in th drawing line orchestrating th needs 4 caring n heering n being with each othr all thdrama uv all uv us lerning why n how creating thru art n th bizness uv life a much mor free n equitabul societee b r e t h contains maneestoreez uv being ther n getting ther n uv th love uv art n each othr th sharing times n th lossesin our journeez 2 b helping each othr n th planet erth nobody owns n thru art manee ways uv lifting ourselvs with kleen watr erth fire n air n love ths b r e t h is abt thees adventursuv sharing physical being n love spiritual n touching th manee ways art poetree can takeus byond th gift n prison uv self in2 th maneeworlds in n uv ths beautiful galaxee n ourselvsuttring th sounds in th images n lettrs n lettrs2 manee passing comets n ourselvs spin threel dreem xchanging love 4 love our maneeselvs on fire our gifts 2 each othr n ourselvs that evreewun has enuff ths time uv th sun n thlite in th dark touch th sun in time with joy n sorrow lerning n unlerning langwage n poetree can show we join with ourselvs n each other.”

originalee from lunaria ovr 300 yeers ago in lunarian time sent by shuttul thru halifax nova scotia originalee wantid 2 b dansr n figur skatr became a poet n paintr in my longings after 12 operaysyuns reelee preventid me from following th inishul direksyuns
— bill bissett

bill bissett garnered international attention in the 1960s as a pre-eminent figure of the counter-culture movement in Canada and the U.K. In 1964, he founded blewointment press, which published the works of bpNichol and Steve McCaffery, among others.

bissett’s charged readings, which never fail to amaze his audiences, incorporate sound poetry, chanting and singing, the verve of which is only matched by his prolific writing career—over seventy books of bissett’s poetry have been published.

A pioneer of sound, visual and performance poetry—eschewing the artificial hierarchies of meaning and the privileging of things (“proper” nouns) over actions imposed on language by capital letters; the metric limitations imposed on the possibilities of expression by punctuation; and the illusion of formal transparency imposed on the written word by standard (rather than phonetic) spelling—bissett composes his poems as scripts for pure performance and has consistently worked to extend the boundaries of language and visual image, honing a synthesis of the two in the medium of concrete poetry.

Among bissett’s many awards are: The George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award (2007); BC Book Prizes Dorothy Livesay Prize (2003) peter among th towring boxes / text bites; BC Book Prizes Dorothy Livesay Prize (1993) inkorrect thots.